I would like to say to our friends posting here who did not the good fortune to be born Greek, that I do not hold it against them been born on the wrong side of the bed. Unfortunately it’s the luck of the draw and if they have ended up with the short straw do not blame us; it’s not our fault and neither yours.
I would also like to say that I do not usually respond to silly arguments expounded by individuals who have not as yet graduated from the popular Wikipedia University. No names to embarrass them, but I am sure they know who they are.
However, I am breaking my own rule here. Despite the crudeness of their arguments in response to the question posed by Musti, I was taken aback to how similar their arguments are to those I have read elsewhere. They echoed a very old anti Greek sentiment and I felt that their argument merits some attention.
The same sentiments were expressed in a much more eloquent way very long ago by a semi barbarian people who benefited the most by the Greek civilization.
I very much though doubt that our friends posting here are aware who these people were and what their attitude towards the Greeks was. Therefore they have not, I think, been influenced by them. But as barbarians think alike, it is of no surprise that a span of over 2000 years can be breached by the same attitude. So what we hear our friends saying about us is in fact a very old hat.
Who were these semi barbarians of old who while benefiting from the Greeks and they so much disliked them? None other than the Romans the west so much admires. (After the Greeks naturally but less hated.)
One has to read Juvenal, Tacitus, old Cato who hated everything Greek, and Pliny among other epithets in his armoury, was referring to the Greeks as “Graeculus” meaning something like “wog”, while at other times he was calling Hellas the mother of civilization. That’s his schizophrenic attitude towards the Greeks. Cicero, another of the great Romans who benefited the most from the Greeks was no better.
While the Romans were fully aware of what they owed to the Greeks, summed up by the phrase “utergue sermo noster”, never stopped hating us. What was the reason for their hatred? Like nowadays, cultural inferiority/envy.
When I hear, not just here, what the “civilised” Europeans say in their mass media about the Greeks, especially after the economic problems in Greece, sounds not an iota different of what the Romans were saying over 2000 years ago. Of course the Europeans who express these negative attitudes towards us are educated and well versed in the classics –Latin- so they adopt the Roman attitude instead of producing something original!! Unfortunately “δρυός πεσούσης πας ανήρ ξυλεύεται” (When the oak tree falls everyone becomes a wood cutter)
If anyone has any doubt as to the truth of what I am stating here, I urge them to read those Romans mentioned above and compare their sentiments to those expressed by some nowadays. You will be surprise to find how similar they are.
Our friends posting at this side are echoing Pliny, they probably never heard of him, when doubting the existence of Greeks. He, Pliny, in a letter to a friend travelling to Greece advised him to pay attention to the cities of classical Greece and to honour the Greeks of what they once were because they have ceased to exist!! Sounds familiar?
Similarly, the Romans considered the Greeks from Ionia (now it’s called Turkey) and the Middle East as lesser Greeks!! Do Greek Cypriots come into mind here?
The same attitudes we see in other Europeans later on, using of course different arguments reaching though the same conclusions; Makes them feel better about their cultural inferiority. Needles to say, there are very many exceptions to the rule.
Despite the Roman negative attitude towards the Greeks, since they couldn’t better the Greek culture, they had the sense of adopting it lock, stock and barrel, and by doing so helped to perpetuate it, unlike the modern barbarians who do their utmost to destroy it.
By way of an example, our compatriots the Turkish Cypriots, not only desecrated my ancestors’ graves, amongst many other barbarities they committed, but turned also the area around the Monastery of St. Andrew, at the tip of the Karbas peninsula, into a donkey sanctuary!!! If you happen to go there take some carrots with you as the donkeys will be following you wherever you go even inside the monastery; and mind their shit it’s everywhere!!!
Before I am accused of hating donkeys, I in fact think that it is most appropriate for the image of this adorable animal to be on the Cyprus flag.
Can you imagine though, us Greek Cypriots, turning the area around the Muslim shrine of Hala Sultan Tekke in Larnaca, into a pig sanctuary with out the civilised west, UNESCO and the UN rising up in arms against the Greek barbarity?
I am sure though that our Turkish Cypriot compatriots posting here do not approve of such things. And to one in particular who has over 500 posts to his credit, I wonder if he shows the same interest in saving the Greek culture in the occupied north from the barbarities of his community, as he shows in saving birds from the lime sticks in the free areas.
I must stop here before some one accuses me of writing a PhD thesis. I hope though it is of some help to our friends posting here.
P.S. I wonder why the Europeans and others doubt the Greek ness of the Greeks but never doubt anybody else’s identity?
Below is a very small sample of acts committed by the civilised.
http://www.hellasforce.com/en/turks-des ... ed-cyprus/http://www.stgeorge-newportrichey.org/I ... Cyprus.pdfhttp://www.moi.gov.cy/moi/pio/pio.nsf/A ... IVIL%20(EN)%20final%202012.pdf
And you still have a monarch? 
